The Bone Box
by GoWithTheFlo20
Summary: The strangest thing about Lily Evans life was not the magic, or castles, or prophecies. It was her pregnancy. You see, when Lily gave birth to her child, she was a virgin. And that's only the beginning. A tale of family, redemption, and what it means to find yourself in a world not your own. Fem!Harry. Kryptonian!Harry. Lex Luthor/Fem!Harry. Strong Clark/Fem!Harry friendship.
1. Chapter 1

**Summary: **The strangest thing about Lily Evans life was not the magic, or castles, or prophecies. It was her pregnancy. You see, when Lily gave birth to her child, she was a virgin. And that's only the beginning. A tale of family, redemption, and what it means to find yourself in a world not your own. Fem!Harry. Kryptonian!Harry. Lex Luthor/Fem!Harry. Strong Clark/Fem!Harry friendship.

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**Tags/warnings**: Voldemort died the night he attacked the Potters. Parental Sirius Black. Parental Remus Lupin. Wolfstar. Kryptonian Fem!Harry. Explored Alien Biology. Not so great Albus Dumbledore. Complete AU for Potterverse. Slow moving (real slow). Eventual Romance (stress on the eventual).

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**CHAPTER ONE:**

**She Crawled.**

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_Lily Evans P.O.V_

The strangest thing about Lily Evans life was not the magic, or castles, or prophecies. It was her pregnancy. You see, when Lily gave birth to her child, she was a virgin. She didn't think many people could boast that truth. Indeed, even if they did claim such a feat, no one would believe them. Lily wouldn't have either, until it was _her_ trying to explain the unexplainable.

Personal experience had a horrid habit of doing that. Shifting opinion right on its wonky head. Scepticism is logical. Cynicism is rational. Doubt is sensible… till the time came when it was _you _staring down the barrel of impossibility. Then what do you do? What do you say? Where do you go for help when you don't even know what you need help for exactly? The world was a cold, cruel place when you had to stand alone outside the realm possibility.

The fact remained. Lily Evans, by the grace of Merlin, right up until her daughter, pink and squawking, clenched fisted and full of ebony curl and indignant fury, had come kicking and screaming her way into the world and tore right through Lily, she had been a virgin in every sense of the word. She had not bedded no man, no woman, no creature. Nothing.

However, she did touch a bloody rock.

Lily wasn't supposed to be in the little American town that day. She was meant to have visited three months later for Christmas. If she had… Well, there was no point in daydreaming about should haves and would beens, is there? Her acceptance letter for her Master of Charms apprenticeship under Professor Flitwick had arrived early. A whole month early, and Lily's life would never be the same.

Knowing she would be bogged down in heavy workloads for the next year, still trying to figure out her fresh relationship with James Potter of all people, perhaps feeling a bit like her life was abruptly moving too fast for her to grasp, Lily had thought she would take a step back, have a breather, catch up with some family, and so, her fate was sealed with the hasty booking of an airplane ticket at four in the morning when everything had seemed so entirely, utterly… Heavy. Heavy and inescapable.

Her aunt and uncle, Rodger and Hyacinth Evans, often visited on holidays. Christmas. Easter. Birthdays. Her mother's older sister was a bright woman, always dressed in yellow with a large brimmed straw hat, no matter the weather, and her smile was kind and gentle and soothing. She taught Lily how to garden, how to prune roses, when to plant tulips in the year, how to hold a cactus without being pricked.

Her husband, Rodger, an American man who owned a farm where Hyacinth ran her florist shop, was a country boy through and through. The American dream hewn in flannel and jeans, hay golden hair, laugh lines on sun kissed skin. He spoke softly and easily, with a smooth drawl. He never once, not even when six-year-old Lily had accidentally run over his foot when she was learning to ride a bike, raised his voice. Petunia, always so prim and prissy, loathed the pair, called them bumpkins and hillbillies, but Lily, oh, Lily adored her aunt and uncle.

In, maybe, a sudden identity crisis, feeling so out of control of her own life, unsure of what she did or didn't want, it was to her aunt and uncle Lily ran. When she turned up on their doorstep, suitcase at her feet, in the little town of Smallville, out of the blue a whole three months before she had promised to visit in December, they had accepted her with sunny smiles and open arms. _Stay as long as you need, dear. You know our home is your home too. It always will be. _That was what Hyacinth had told her. One of the last, in truth. Rodger and Hyacinth would be dead within two weeks.

When the meteorite shower came.

Lily intended to head back the night before the shower, on October the 6th. Bolstered by sunshine, family and breezy days of helping her aunt make bouquets out her greenhouse, she felt… Stronger. Life had seemed good. Too good, in hindsight. She had a loving boyfriend who, despite the rumours of his insatiableness in Hogwarts, had not pushed her to cross the big line until she was ready. She had good friends, true friends, in Frank and Alice. She had just secured her first choice in Master's of Magics. Why was she so filled with dread? There was no reason. None. And, maybe, if she kept telling herself that, she might just begin to believe it.

Nevertheless, it had oddly rained that day. The roads had been slick. One more day, surely, could not hurt? When Rodger and Hyacinth had offered to drive her to the airport on the 7th, when Lily could have easily apparated home, she had taken their offer readily. She had wanted to spend as much time with them as possible, uncertain of when she would have time to see them next. A few more hours to clear her head before she got back to her life. She never knew that when she nodded her head that day, she set everything into motion. One nod, and her life went tail spinning out of control.

The first meteor had crashed right in front of them on the junction between the cornfields and interstate to mainland Kansas. The next, within a blink, had struck into the side of the truck. Lily had gone flying, rolling, crashing, hurtling. Thrown from the car through the open window. The last thing she saw, upside down, dazed and dizzy with a pounding in her head and a shrill ringing in her bleeding ears, was her aunts panicked face before the car had gone up in flames.

She had known no more.

When she awoke, it had been night. She was hurt. Broken. Bleeding. Her leg was jacked and refused to move. Yet, there was no sign of the car about her, in that cornfield she had landed in. She had dragged herself through the mud and muck, through the burning rocks and torched crop, with clawed fingers. She had thought if she just got out the field, if she made it to the road, if she just… Moved, she would find her aunt and uncle standing there, right as rain, smiling, and no, she had not seen-

She crawled.

She crawled.

She crawled.

Hours, days, Lily didn't know. The healers would later tell her she was suffering from a severe concussion. All she knew then, really knew, was time didn't seem to work right in that tragic moment of her life. It was jumbled. Flashes of sensation. The stench of smoke and death in her nostrils. The flavour of copper on her tongue. The echo of buzzing in her ears. The slip of cold, slick dirt on her ripped skin.

Until it wasn't mud anymore.

Lily stumbled upon it accidentally, that metal pod. She would have slithered like a snake right on over it if it had not, as soon as her hand touched it, scorched her palm jarringly. But it did burn, and she did stop, and the pod, such a strange contraption of bronze and silver blackened metal, did open.

It was a small thing, Lily remembered that much. Barely the size of a milk crate, with strange writing, she thought, later, it _might _have been writing, scrawled across its sundering face. The rock was inside. Crystal. Spiking. Purple. _Beautiful. _It hummed, it sang, and Lily, broken and bruised and bleeding Lily, was captivated.

She didn't know what made her reach out. She didn't know what made her fingers skim the crystal. She did know the bloody thing then zapped her, akin to tiny, crackling bolts of lightning, right in the stomach. That was the stage of her child's conception.

Blood, tragedy, and the brush of crystal.

* * *

_Fifteen Years Later…_

_Sirius Black's P.O.V_

"Dea! It's time for lunch! Get your arse down here!"

Sirius Black bellowed up the winding staircase of Grimmauld Place. Silence answered his cry. Now he knew something was up. His precious, lovable, completely calamitous goddaughter was only ever this quiet when she was up to something, something big if she was willing to skip a meal, generally never missing a chance to refill her bottomless gut. Marching up the stairs two at a time, and down the twisting hallway, he stalled at her door, eyeing the starburst burn mark near the handle.

_Oh dear… Not again. _

When he opened the door he found her. Dea, as he had come to call her, Potter, stood in the very middle of her bedroom, stiff backed, hands clasped behind her, looking everywhere but at him, still in her jeans and jumper from last night.

When Dea was nine years old, she had hit her first growth spurt. And then another. And another. And another. Now, only fifteen-years-old, she was 6 ft and, like bamboo, appeared to still be sprouting towards the sky at dizzying speeds. All arms and legs and lithe slopes. It only seemed like yesterday Sirius was giving her piggyback rides across Kensington Gardens, now, she was handing him things down from the top shelf.

She hunched a lot, his Dea, shrinking and huddled, trying to appear short and less gangly, but she still stood out like a sore thumb in her Hogwarts year photos. The red and gold decorated giant in a sea of tiny, nervous first years, slightly taller second years, and back to minuscule third years as she hit another growth spurt and dwarfed those around her. No. Dea didn't look like a fifteen-year-old. She hadn't for a long time. Pale skinned and midnight haired, wily and keen featured, she was a nymph sprang free from an Italian fresco.

About as much trouble as one too.

Cocking his brow, Sirius Black folded his arms over his chest.

"What are you doing?"

Her reply was far too swift and much too innocent.

"Nothing."

Sirius spotted the crinkled, aged piece of paper by her foot. She saw him looking and winced. _Got'cha. _Strolling over, he bent over and plucked it up. Flicking it out, an old copy of the Daily Prophet's headline page greeted him. Lily Potter's startled face, blinking, shielded by her hand as she came stumbling out Saint Mongos by James's side, replayed in flashes and bursts. Above her head was her own death sentence. _Virgin Birth: Second Coming of Merlin or the Darkest of Magics? _

Sirius ran a tired hand through his tangled curls. Bloody journalists. Was it not enough they had ruined Lily's life fifteen years ago, now they were haunting his goddaughter? Ambling over to Dea's bed, he plonked himself on the edge and gently shook the paper in his hands.

"Have you got any more of these stashed away, perhaps?"

Bashfully, Dea slinked her arms out from behind her back and produced a stack of yellowed papers, holding them out for Sirius. He took them, sighing, sagging, slumping.

"Dea, we've talked about this-"

"I know. I know you say it's not important. I know you say James and Lily loved me very much and that's all that matters. I _know_… I just…"

Sirius patted the edge of the bed near him. Dea tumbled over with heavy footsteps and, by the tautness of her face, a heavy heart. The bed creaked underneath her weight. If somebody had told him, thirteen years ago, two of his friends, his dear, dear friends, would be dead, another rotting in Azkaban where he deserved to be, and he would be left raising a child, more importantly, a child _like _Dea, he would have laughed in their face and told them to ease off the firewhiskey for the night.

Yet, here he was. Here Dea was. And he was making a right mess of it all, wasn't he? He tried. Merlin, Lily and James, wherever they be in the afterlife, must know that. He was _trying. _Sirius just wasn't exactly succeeding.

"You're curious."

Cautiously, Dea nodded. Reaching out, Sirius placed a soft hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently. She was hot underneath his scarred fingers. Dea ran a little warmer than most. In the grand scheme of it all, that was the least of their concerns. Dea Potter was not… _Normal. _She tried to be, as Sirius tried to be a good parent, but they both fell short of the finish line, didn't they?

"I only want to know why I'm not like the others at school. They… Zabini told everyone I'm half Dementor."

Sirius couldn't help it, he laughed.

"Dementor? Not with that pretty face."

Dea didn't laugh. She hadn't laughed in a while. Finally, she met his eye, and there it was. Shimmering in the iris. Her stubborn streak a mile wide.

"Why can't I play quidditch?"

Sirius's hand fell from her shoulder with a muted thud on the unmade bed.

"You know why, love. We've talked about this. Look what happened to the Weasley boy when you were four and-"

"Why can't I go back to Hogwarts this year?"

Sirius took a moment to compose himself, rolling his neck and counting down from ten. Dea knew why. They all did. She just wanted him to say it. Make her insecurities real by verbalising them. _You're not normal. You're dangerous. You don't belong with the others. _However, Sirius wouldn't ever speak those words. Dea _wasn't _ordinary. Dea _was_ dangerous. Perhaps, she _didn't _belong in the wizarding world. Yet, she was _his _goddaughter. The little bundle of super strength, speed and chaos he had raised since she was six months old. He loved her. He only ever wanted the best for her. And he had messed it all up so badly.

"Dea, you know why. Me and Moony talked, and we think it's better to home school you… For now. It won't be for long. I promise, on my honour as a Marauder. You'll be back before your sixth year and it will be like you never left and-"

"Is it because I accidentally burnt down the girls bathroom?"

Sirius shook his head.

"You didn't burn it down, Dea. You… Light came out your eyes and you…"

In the end, Dea broke. Dea, the fifteen-year-old saviour of the wizarding world. Dea, the girl who could lift a quidditch stadium above her head and not strain. Dea, the girl who could run faster than apparition. Dea, who could shoot beams of light from her bloody eyes and devastate entire areas. Dea, a young girl with too much power, all the confusion and hormones, and with no one who knew how to help her. The child who wasn't really a child anymore.

Yet, she would always be _his _child.

It killed him to see her like this.

"I didn't mean to. I swear it. Malfoy and Parkinson cornered Hermione in the bathrooms and were calling her a mudblood. Parkinson shoved her down and… They had a knife… I… I heard her crying and I… Malfoy said-… I got angry. I couldn't… I was so angry and… I don't know what's happening to me. I didn't mean to hurt anybody."

She sounded so lost, his Dea. Lost and scared. As lost and terrified as Sirius pretended he wasn't. The truth was no one knew what was happening to Dea. No one knew what she was. No one knew where she came from. Perhaps Lily had known, somewhat, but she had taken that knowledge to the grave with her.

Grasping her by the biceps, Sirius twisted Dea to look at him fully. She refused to meet his eye again. Only making it to the tip of his nose. Sirius's heart shattered. The only thing she had of her mother's were those green, green eyes. Bright. Lurid. Alive. There was no James in her. There wouldn't be.

"I know you didn't mean to, love. But… But you _did_. You nearly hurt a lot of people. And no, no, don't think that. It's _not_ your fault. But you need to get control of this… These… You need to learn to control yourself. You might hurt yourself one day, and I couldn't bear it."

The truth was Sirius, and Moony to a certain extent, had done this to her. Oh, they didn't give her the gifts she had, those were all her own, but this debacle was exclusively and poignantly on his own shoulders.

When, at four, she had sped off at Bill Weasley's birthday party and broken his arm with a simple touch, Sirius had panicked. The Aurors who came to investigate asked too many questions, looked too hard on little Dea, and Sirius understood all too well what the Ministry did to those of Dea's type. Remus, a common werewolf, had to hide what he was for a mere low-waged job, never mind having graduated top of his class with all honours. Merlin knew what they would do to Dea if she showed any more signs of divergency.

They kept her away. No more birthday parties. No more visits to other wizarding families. No more anything. Sirius had thought if he kept her at home, kept her away and safe, he could teach her to restrain herself and by the time she got to Hogwarts, all would be well. She could blend in and live a quiet, normal life.

He only made it worse.

Not used to socializing with others not Remus and Sirius, ostracized for what the press said about her in the papers, so physically, and mentally, different to those her own age, Dea's first year at Hogwarts was a complete disaster. Too smart for her lessons, though Sirius had begged Dumbledore to put her a few years ahead for her own sake, a request that was denied on 'tradition', she outstripped her class, distilling a sort of mass hostility. Everything was too loud for her, her hearing having always been sensitive, and she couldn't stomach the normal places the kids gathered. This, coupled with her intellect, only made her seem arrogant and condescending.

Then came her gifts.

She couldn't hold back her own strength sometimes. She broke tables and pillars, and, trying to make friends, in second year, when she held the moving staircase in fucking place for people to get to lessons on time, she only succeeded to further terrify those around her and additionally alienate herself. She sped about the place, not realizing other children couldn't move as fast. The teachers wouldn't allow her on the Quidditch team, Dea's last hope at finding a group of people to fit in with in third year, stating her… 'Advantages' were cheating. And, in a fateful Defence lesson in fourth year, when called upon to practice duelling, when the spells had merely clipped off her and hit the surrounding walls, not so much as singeing an eyelash, the damage was done.

The wizarding world didn't like people who broke free from their pretty boxes, and Dea's was irrevocably smashed.

By the time of the Malfoy incident, Dumbledore had already written up her expulsion papers. After wrecking the whole of the third floor where the girls bathrooms were located, McGonagall had no other option, despite liking Dea, to sign the papers on account of hazardous behaviour. So, before her fourth year was up, Dea was kicked out, with only the clause of re-entry when, and if, her behaviour had improved, notarized by a Ministry official.

Oh, Sirius could see the dominoes falling, and Dea was right in the line of fire.

The ministry official was due in the next week. There, they would test Dea. No doubt, he would come up short, and then, they would say they needed to take Dea to specialists. Far away, unnameable experts. Sirius would never see the girl again, he knew. She would disappear. Locked up, dead, experimented on, _used… _No doubt, Dumbledore would give a spiel on how it was for the 'greater good'. Well, he could shove his greater good up his wrinkly arse and suck a-

"I just want to be like everyone else. I want to know _who_ I am."

Sirius's hands slipped from her biceps up to her jaw, cradling. Leaning in, he kissed her forehead and whispered into her curls.

"I know. I know."

Pulling back, he glanced down to the stack of papers in his lap. What else could he say? You shouldn't exist? You're impossible? The papers had said all that before. After coming back from visiting family in America, Lily Evans had soon learned she was pregnant. After an in-depth examination, it was found she was still a virgin. The news had leaked from St Mungo's within hours, spreading like wildfire. The last virgin birth in their long, long history had been Merlin's.

Then the prophecy had come crashing down upon them when Lily was eight months gone. _Born to a woman untouched by man. Born as the seventh month dies. The child from the stars will have the power the Dark Lord knows not, and where the mother falls, so shall he. Born to a woman untouched by man. Born as the seventh month dies. The child from the stars will atone for the father's sins, or doom us all. _Lily, the only pregnant virgin for millennia, was promptly put into hiding. James wed her that very night, in an attempt to claim the child as his, but no one believed it. The killing blow was done when Lily's healer had sold her story, and her un-doctored medical records, to an up and coming Rita Skeeter of all people.

The rest was history. Voldemort tracked them through Peter, murdered them in their own home, in Dea's own nursery, and at six months old, the Avada Kedavra spell, as many had done in her Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson, ricocheted off a crying Dea and struck Voldemort dead. There wasn't even a scar to show for it all.

"Is it true? Was mum a virgin? Don't I have a dad?"

Sirius ruffled her hair.

"Your dad was James Potter, Dea. You may not have his blood, but he loved you very much. Never doubt that. As for a father, well, I supposed everybody has a father. Even you. Yours is just a bit more… Complicated."

Shifting the stack of papers and ghosts off his lap, Sirius regarded Dea. He was out of his own depth here. Out of depth and out of time before the Ministry came knocking upon their door.

"Lily was visiting her family in America when she… Became pregnant with you. Not searching for Camelot like these papers tell you. She left you their farm in her will. It's yours."

Dea frowned.

"She did?"

Sirius nodded.

"From what little Lily would say of that day, from what I know, the farm should still be there."

Dea hesitated for a moment, chewing over the news with her fang wrangling her bottom lip.

"Can I go? One day, I mean. I know I'm grounded-"

Sirius chuckled.

"Which is not for the accident at Hogwarts, but for sneaking out when you should be sleeping. You nearly gave poor Moony a heart attack when he came to check on you and found your bed empty last night. And don't think I don't know you've been up all night reading these papers. You're still in yesterday's clothing. You need to sleep, Dea. You're invulnerable not invincible."

Her voice dropped. Hushed. frail. Weak.

"I like… Running. I… It's like I have so much energy in me and-… Everything's tissue paper. I touch it and it crumbles. Do you know what it's like living in a sandcastle? One distracted second and it all starts collapsing. Running helps me concentrate so I don't squish everything."

There was nothing Sirius could say. He didn't know what that was like. Magic, to an extent, was volatile, unpredictable, but out of toddler-hood, unintentional magics was unheard of. Magic worked on the contrary, it needed intent. He didn't know what his life would be like if he had to focus on limiting his magic continuously in fear of lashing out in a split second of preoccupation. He thought, though, it could have been hellish. An infernal existence his goddaughter didn't deserve, not for a moment, but had to endure in any hopes of having a life worth living. Stretching out, he draped an arm around her stooped shoulders and stroked her arm soothingly.

"We can go to the farm."

Instantly, she brightened.

"Really?"

Sirius winked at her wide, imploring eyes.

"Where do you think Remus is right now? He's packing our bags. We leave tonight."

They needed to. They should have gone a long time ago. With the Ministry coming… Yes. They needed to leave and they needed to leave now. They needed to find out what happened, precisely, to Lily all those years ago. They needed to find out why Dea was the way she was. Then, only then, they could help Dea properly. Pretending Dea was a normal child wasn't working anymore. Sirius had to face the truth. The truth that was somewhere, hiding, in a little place called Smallville.

Dea sprang up, excited, but Sirius stood too and held up his hand.

"But you have to promise me you'll keep your head down. No trouble, Dea. I mean it. No running off. No messing with the muggles. Nothing. You stay at the farm. End off. You leave the rest to me and Remus. And you will continue your lessons. No slouching. Most importantly, no more midnight runs without telling me or Moony first, alright?"

Her smile was dazzling.

"I promise!"

Sirius pulled her into a tight hug.

"I love you, kid."

Unhurriedly, she embraced him back, rigid, wary. She was holding back, afraid to squeeze too tight. Always holding back. It must be tiring.

"I love you too."

Sirius dragged himself away and playfully flicked her nose. It stung his fingernail, like pinging six foot of reinforced steel swathed in velvet. The slight pain didn't make a difference. He had done that since she was a year old, and sting or not, he would continue to do so until he was rumpled and grey.

"You know, you're lucky James was there when you were born. Your mother was out of it. Mumbling and rambling. She kept demanding you be named Zod."

Her face scrunched as if she sucked on a lemon.

"What kind of name is Zod?"

Sirius chuckled and shrugged.

"Exactly. In the end, James convinced her to meet him halfway, and so, here you are. Zodea Potter. Zod, for Lily, Dea after James's mother. It was her nickname. She would have loved you. So would Charlus… But, enough of the past. This old man could reminisce for hours. Come on. Lunch is getting cold on the table and we need to leave soon if we're going to make it on time. You know how Moony gets when we're late."

She sauntered passed him, towards the bedroom door, grinning cheekily, spirits, for the first time in a year, lifted from the gutter they had plunged into.

"We wouldn't be late half the time if you spent less hours preening in the mirror like a Malfoy peacock."

Sirius scoffed.

"Oi, cheeky! No cheesecake for you."

She froze in the crux of the door.

"We have cheesecake?"

With a whoosh, she was gone. Sirius dashed for the door, head thrusting out into the hallway, voice trailing the blur that rushed for the kitchen.

"What have I said about running in the house! Those are new carpets! Dea! Dea! Bloody hell. What am I going to do with you."

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**Would you like to see more? **

**A.N: **So, I was on the train home from University for Christmas break when… This, whatever this actually is, came out. Either way, I hope you all liked it! And Happy Holidays!


	2. Chapter 2

**TIMELINE NOTE: **I have altered the ages in this fic. As one reviewer rightfully pointed out, Zodea should have been around 12/13 in the first chapter if she were to appear in season two of Smallville. Yet, even if she looks older, I just felt a bit yucky at having such a young Zodea meet someone she was eventually going to get into a romantic relationship with, even if that was much later, at such a young age. Fifteen was the lowest age I was willing to go on the matter, and I really wanted Zodea in Smallville just at the start of season 2 for… Reasons to come lol. So, I diddled the ages and the time the meteor shower hit lmao.

In cannon, Clark was 14/15 in season one and 15/16 in season two. This is kept the same, but, in canon, he was around 3 when he landed on earth and Martha and Jonathan found him. If Zodea was to come at fifteen, Clark would have been around 18/19, and much too late for season two. So, this I've changed. In this fic, he was only a few months old when they found him in the ship, not wondering around the cornfield (This actually fits more with Superman canon). This makes Clark around a year, year and a half older than Zodea. So, by the time we get to season 2 of Smallville, Clark is 16, which fits with the canon, and Zodea 15.

As for Lex's age, in season two of Smallville, Lex was around 22 years old. In canon, the meteor shower only hit 12/13 years ago, but in this fic, it was 15/16, meaning Lex, in this fic, was around seven years old, and not nine as he was in canon, when the meteors came.

That means, in short, the changes are as follows. The meteor shower hit Smallville 15, nearly 16 not 13 years ago. Clark was only a few months old when he landed, and Lex was 7 when he lost his hair. As for the other characters, that will be explained throughout the fic but just assume they're the same ages as they are in canon if not explicitly said otherwise, apart from Lana, who I've had to add a couple of years to, to have her witness her parents passing as she did in canon.

So, there we go. This fic is based just after episode one of season 2, but before the return to school in episode 2, so Clark is 16, Zodea 15, Lana is 17/18, and Lex is 22 at the beginning of this fic, leaving a 7/8 year age gap between Zodea and Lex rather than the 9/10 which would have been if I kept it all entirely canon. I hope that clears up some of the confusion, and if not, the timeline changes will be explored throughout this fic, so that should clear up what I have, quite rubbishly, tried to explain lol.

* * *

**CHAPTER TWO:**

**What Fathers Are For.**

* * *

_Lana Lang's P.O.V_

Lana Lang watched her aunt juggle the plate in her hands as she bent over near the wing mirror of their Sierra truck, demurely fluffing the ends of her hair and smacking her lips together to perfect her cherry red lipstick. Lana, struggling with her own cloche dish, giggled at the sight, bouncing down the steps of their veranda.

"Nell, I don't think that's necessary."

Nell, whose fair face was now tarnished by a profound pout, wrenched away from the mirror with a rather spectacular huff.

"What? Don't think your aunt can pull a date anymore? I saw them drive up two days ago. That one with the black hair and silver eyes… Wow. Just… Wow."

As was typical in a small town, with the arrival of newcomers came the inevitable curiosity of the locals. It wasn't everyday someone moved to Smallville of all places. Even less when those moving had parked themselves front and centre by the old Evans farm. The farmstead had been emptied of all signs of life for nearly sixteen years now. Ever since Rodger and Hyacinth had encountered what many in this small-town had when the meteors struck.

Death.

Yet, there had been no estate agents milling about, marking up prices, picketing selling signs, throughout the years and so, it begged the question of what Evans was returning to the holy land. Or that was her aunt's theory. Lana was just interested in meeting theirs, and the Kent's, new neighbours, be who they may. With a hastily baked set of cookies and cake whipped up that very morning, Nell made her move and, feeling her own little tendrils of timid curiosity squirming hotly in her gut, Lana had gone along for the ride.

Someone needed to be there to stop her aunt from saying the wrong thing, after all.

The two women set off down the rolling path as Lana smirked at Nell.

"I don't think you have the right components, auntie. I saw them this morning, the two men, taking the locks off their barn. They kissed."

Lana had been going to meet the postman down near the main road before he turned into their little spot of rural heaven, needing a dose of crisp morning air to wipe away sleeps cobwebs, when she had spotted the pair for a moment before she carried on her little journey and they, now with an open barn, disappeared inside. She hadn't meant to be nosy; Lana was good at keeping herself to herself usually, but they had looked…

Happy. Happy and content and, such a normal action, kissing your significant other good morning, well, Lana, who had survived an actual tornado a fortnight ago, was searching for those glimpses of normality that would stop the nightmares and get her squarely back to her regular life. Where surviving tornado's wasn't a weekly occurrence, walking away with nothing but a sprained ankle was a given, and nightmares that lead to a hazy dream of seeing her best friends, Clark Kent's, impossible face through the swirling and whirling wind, reaching into her car… Saving her, didn't plague her nightly.

Maybe Lana, after another strange, strange dream of rough winds and frantic blue eyes, had gone for a morning walk to clear her head, and had, perhaps, spied a tender moment between their new neighbours she shouldn't have seen, and maybe, just maybe, feeling so out of place in her own life, she had stopped to watch such a mundane action before she carried on her merry way, but none of that meant she was nosy.

_It didn't. _

Nell tutted and tugged on the hem of her flowery blouse.

"Well, that's a waste of my expensive perfume. Do you think they might be interested in a… Third party?"

Lana sputtered, nearly stumbling over her own sneaker clad feet, when she sharply glanced to her aunt. Nell's eyes were twinkling, and the stiffness to her mouth told of a harshly suppressed grin. Lana playfully hit her arm, which only made Nell break and laugh at Lana's very noticeable embarrassment in the mist of blush stippling the apple of her cheeks.

Coming to the edge of the Evans farm, Lana was suddenly hit with the notion that despite death and the never-ending sprawl of time, life seemed to find a way. The fields were overrun now, with wildflowers and dense beds of mint stretching out from the little pond at the far fringe. The once colossal greenhouse had seemingly exploded, leaving trundles of lilies, tulips and brightly rendered orchids dispersing and creeping across every available surface like a spilled painters pallet. The pond itself was green with algae, rippling here and there, fish concealed beneath the emerald drape.

Contrarily, the house and barn seemed frozen. Locked in a moment. The yellow paint needed a new coat, there was a missing tile dotted across the slanted roof, the ivy vines inching up the house needed a good pruning, and the barn required a panel or two replaced, but, right down to the _Welcome To Evans Florist; Where A Flower A Day Keeps The Rain At Bay _sign sitting lopsided on the entrance gate, looked to be exactly as Lana remembered it to be when her aunt visited the Evans niece and took a two-year-old Lana along to pick some raspberries.

Ascending the deck stairs, Nell flashed Lana a quick grin before drumming on the front door in a procession of thumps and clicks from the clack of her rings. Smoothing her slender shoulders, holding the plate primly before her, Lana set her best, most friendly, smile on her face.

"One moment!"

A gruff English voice came from somewhere deep inside. Abruptly, the door swung open. A tall, almost staggeringly so, man stood on the threshold, hand on the door handle, other on the frame… Glaring at them. He appeared a bit haggard, in his tweed slacks and buttoned white pressed oxford shirt, with his caramel hair sticking and curling in every direction it possibly could.

He had a few days' worth of stubble lining his keen jaw, with wolfish features twisted in a scowl, and his brown eyes seemed almost astonishingly amber in the noon spring sunshine. Nevertheless, most jarring, what Lana could not see from her distance this morning, was the set of gnarly scars slashing across his face, neck, and bared forearms, slices of pink and white on tanned skin, as if the man had hopped into a ring with a grizzly bear and still came out glowering.

Lana tried her hardest not to stare too long at the scars.

"Can I help you?"

He sounded as if that was, quite possibly, the last thing he ever wanted to do in a deep drawl. Nell stuttered and, wordlessly, held out the tray she was clutching as if a plate could explain what she, currently, could not. The man glared down at the plate, his mouth opened, and then an elbow came dashing out the turn to strike him in the ribs, pushing him aside. From the corner, out crept the man Lana's aunt had been eyeing, so strangely opposite to the one that had received them.

He was shorter, but no less mesmerizing in his fresh black pants, shirt, and mauve waist coat. His long, black hair was clasped back by a cuff of silver, as light and glistening as his eyes, and his own beard was neatly trimmed to follow the sloping line of his angular face. Crucially, opposed to the taller mans glower and stern, this one was smiling toothily, widely, with all the charm and wit of a man who knew exactly how devastatingly handsome and suave he was.

Lana liked the couple immediately.

As if he could read her mind, the black-haired man winked at her.

"Now, Remus, don't be rude. Why, 'ello! Come in, come in. Excuse the mess, and my currently surly other half, we're still unpacking you see. It's been a busy couple of days."

The two women beamed as they strode through the sweeping arm of the silver-eyed man and into the house. The home was very much like hers and Clark's, with an open kitchen that lead to a cosy living room. Lana, though, was surprised by how few boxes there were left stacked in the corners and nooks, and how immaculate the inside of the house already was. If it was her and Nell who had only arrived two days ago, there would still be mountains to get through and piles of take-away cartons littering the kitchen sink.

"We brought you these as a welcoming gift."

Nell replied as she passed over the cloche platter in her hands to the shorter man. There was something a bit… Off, Lana thought. He barely looked to be in his early thirties, but, there, in those silver eyes, he seemed… Older. Wiser. He took it and leaned in conspiratorially close to the pair, something mischievous sparking in his bright eyes.

"Do you want to see a magic trick?"

The other, gruffer man, Remus, the shorter one had called him, still standing vigil by the door, slammed it shut and practically barked at black and silver.

"Sirius."

Sirius, if that could remotely be any sort of name, drew back and lifted the cloche off the plate. Theatrically, with an elegant flick of his wrist, he held it up and out and-… Yes, started to count down.

"Five… Four… Three… Two… One-"

A door leading out back cracked open and a head popped out.

"Do I smell cookies?"

Sirius's laughter was warm and pleasant, like scented smoke. Gently, he placed the plate on the kitchen island as the newcomer to their little gathering came ambling in, nearer and closer, taller and lankier, larger and greater. Attired in ripped jeans, an old torn sleeved band shirt, and scuffed timberland boots, she was positively a goliath of fascinating portions and prospects, regardless of the way she hunched down and scraped her boots along the floor.

As much as she tried to be inverse, it seemed, to Lana at least, impossible not to see her and have your breath catch a little in your throat. It wasn't just her sheer height that was captivating, but she seemed… Infinite outside her own nimble frame. One of those rare people who, no matter who already inhabited the room, how big that room was, filled it with their presence without ever really trying to. Limitless and beautiful. Pretty in the way Hemlock and Foxglove was pretty.

Fatally.

She homed in on the plate, snatched up a cookie, and crammed the whole thing in her mouth.

"Now that everyone is here, we can have some proper introductions. I'm Sirius, that big ball of grumpy by the door is Remus, and the one currently stuffing her mouth indecently is Zodea, our goddaughter. Dea, manners."

Zodea peeked up from the plate for the first time, cheeks puffed with another two cookies, and at last spotted the two strangers in her home. There, Lana saw, was the Evans that had come rambling home. Her eyes, so very green, were eerily redolent, almost precisely, of the vague memory Lana had of the kind, redheaded friend of her aunts. Chewing quickly, the woman raised her hand shyly and gave a little wave as a flush scorched across her face. Lana, smiling fiercely, waved back. Nell snickered and held her hand out for Sirius to shake.

"Eleanor Potter, but everyone calls me Nell. This is my lovely Lana. Welcome to Smallville."

Sirius paused, his grin becoming oddly strained.

"Potter?"

Hand hovering in the still air between them, fingers flexing, Nell stumbled over the peculiar question.

"Uh, yes…"

Before it was ever really there, leaving Lana to doubt whether she saw his hesitation or not, Sirius was back to grinning ruthlessly as he gracefully swooped up her aunts hand and, forgoing the shake, rakishly bowed and kissed her knuckles. Her aunt _actually _simpered.

"I could not ask for a more enchanting welcoming if I tried. Tell me, is that the delightful Bottega Veneta I smell?"

Nell coyly drew her hand back and fluttered it airily, the other snaking up to her hair to loop a curl around her finger.

"Yes it is. What an amazing nose you have, sir. No one ever-"

Lana shook her head. Fantastic. Her aunt was a harmless flirt, really, and by the looks of it, Remus tugging away from the door with a roll of his amber gaze but a soft smile thawing his severe features, the cookie crumbed scoff of the behemoth woman drooping by the kitchen table, so was this Sirius.

As the three elder people began to chat, Lana found herself gravitating towards Zodea, the only one who could possibly be around her own age, though, Lana suspected, a good few years older. Seeing the company heading her way cautiously, the woman pushed the plate of cookies in Lana's direction, only speaking after a rather sizeable swallow.

"Do you want some?"

Lana politely declined as she set her own dish on the table sandwiched between them.

"No thank you. My aunt baked too many. Our cupboards are full of them. Enough to feed us, and half of Smallville, for the next six months I suspect. Nell doesn't understand the concept of moderation."

Zodea chuckled, and it was deeper than Lana was expecting. Raspy and rich, her English twang tinted with some sort of rocking brogue Lana couldn't place.

"Remus likes baking. He's good at it too. Just don't let Sirius near an oven. We can't afford to move again."

Seizing a chair across from Zodea, now with the ice broken by despairing over their equally exasperating relatives, Lana strove to keep the conversation going.

"So, are you going to be joining Senior year? I can show you around if you want? Or are you applying for college? Oh, silly me, you likely already go."

A perplexed frown puckered between Zodea's arching brows, as she squinted down at herself.

"Do they let fifteen year olds into college in America?"

Lana spluttered and scrambled with all the dignity of a cat dunked into a bucket of water.

"You're _fifteen_?"

Well, people did say when you assumed, you made an ass of you and me, and Lana felt definitely ass-like right then. Luckily, the woman, girl really, didn't take it to heart, straightening out to show off all her six-foot splendour with an affable shrug of her shoulders.

Sitting so close, Lana had to crane her neck back somewhat to keep eye contact. Never before in her life, apart from the few instances with Clark Kent and Lex Luthor when the two titans stood a bit too close, did Lana ever feel all of her own five-two frame so poignantly.

"Last time I checked I was. At least, that's what my birth certificate says."

Lana flushed. Lana faltered. And Lana made a complete fool out of herself.

"I'm, sorry. I just thought-… I assumed… You're so tall and you don't look-… I-… Oh, god, I've really put my foot in it, haven't I?"

Lana laughed self-consciously, wincing at the high pitch her voice took. Mercifully, the girls face was kind, open, gentle, as her head cocked to the side, dark rambunctious curls skimming the slope of her neck where it was bluntly cut just before it could touch her shoulders.

"It's alright. You're not the first to think I have a mortgage and a steady nine-to-five, and I doubt you'll be the last. But… No. I won't being going to school. I'm being home tutored. With the different curriculum between America and Scotland, we thought it would be easier for me to handle."

Lana had the distinct impression the 'we' she proclaimed was not as inclusive as Zodea had wished for it to be. She knew that feeling all to well and, right then, blushing, fidgeting in her seat, Lana Lang felt a glimmer of kinship flicker in the crux of her chest. Taking in a deep breath, Lana held her head high and offered out her hand across the table.

"Can we start again?"

Delicately, limp, almost as if she was afraid to touch the smaller girl, Zodea sluggishly took the offered appendage, scarcely wrapping her fingers around Lana's. She was warm, Lana noted. Very warm. She might have jumped at the sense of it if she had not spent years around Clark and his incessantly high body temp. Some people, Lana thought, just ran hotter. Perhaps, funnily, it was a _tall _thing.

"I'm Lana Lang, your new neighbour. Nice to meet you Zodea."

A smile, wily and witty and wholly wry, blossomed on Zodea's pale visage.

"Just Dea. Nice to meet you Lovely-Lana."

Lana slanted closer, cheery and light.

"I'm just about to meet some friends at the local coffee shop. Clark is around your age. It would be cool if you could come?"

Zodea's smile fell, shattering between them, and there was an incredibly unexpected shift to the girl. So sudden, it made Lana blink dizzily. She yanked her hand away, which Lana had forgotten she had been holding, and withdrew, as far as the kitchen would let her. Her eyes dropped, back to the plate, and Lana watched confusedly as she began plucking some cookies up. When she spoke, her voice was cold and brittle, like fall wind.

"No. Sorry."

Lana faltered.

"Well, maybe next time, yea-"

Zodea was already striding away, back the way she came, out the room. Remus shouted at her back inquisitively when she had to march around him to get to the door.

"Dea?"

He too was too late as Zodea vanished with nothing but the click of the door closing shut and the thud of a timberland boot. Silence descended upon them pitilessly as Sirius glanced between the spot Zodea had disappeared to and Lana who, belatedly realizing, still held her hand up and out. It dropped to her lap as Sirius turned apologetic.

"I'm sorry. Dea's had a tough go at it lately, and the move hasn't been easy on her."

Nell broke the awkwardness with a jovial laugh and a dismissive wave of her hand.

"We understand. Teens, am I right? Well, I have work to get to. Flowers don't sell themselves you know. Lana, we should go darling. You know what, come around tomorrow night for tea. My treat. I'll invite the Kents over and we can have a real get together?"

Sirius nodded while Remus still frowned at the door Zodea had slunk through.

"That would be wonderful."

With a quick set of goodbyes and a see you soon, Lana and her aunt left. No one spoke until they reached the Evans farm gate.

"What an interesting family."

Lana peeked behind her to the yellow house. Zodea was by the barn. She glanced up. Met Lana's eye. Then she was gone. Into the barn. Away. Lana found herself speaking before she really meant to.

"I think the girl's lonely."

Nell scanned Lana as the two carried on their short walk home, frowning.

"What makes you think that?"

Lana shrugged.

"I don't know. I just… Sense it."

There was something incredibly lonely and… Sad about Zodea. A sort of melancholy that clung to her skin like a beloved fragrance. Lana hadn't really saw it until she had stopped smiling. Because that's what it did, that sort of sorrow. It hid. Behind smiles and laughter, wit and wry, it buried itself, but it was always _there. _She had seen it in her aunt's puffy eyes when her parents and grandparents had died in the meteor shower, she had seen it in the distorted reflection of herself shimmering off her parents polished gravestones, and she had seen it in the creases of Clark's face when he thought no one was looking.

Nell sidled up to her, linking her arm through Lana's elbow.

"They have just moved all the way from England to a small rural American town, dear. That can't be an easy change on anyone, let alone a teenager. How about tomorrow, you and the Kent's boy befriend her? Invite her out after dinner? Show her some local sights, introduce her to some friends, it might set her at ease at having some faces and places she can name to all the newness. If anyone can help her settle in, I know it's you."

Lana brightened.

"Yeah. Yeah I can. When did you become so smart?"

Nell scoffed and went to clip her up the back of the head for her good-natured snipe, as Lana ducked and laughed.

* * *

_Remus Lupin's P.O.V_

Dea had her back to him when Remus entered the barn. Rake in hand, she was making short work of mopping out the old hay strewing the floor. He supposed having her style of strength helped, as he observed her stoop near the old rusting tractor, gripped the thick bumper, and, one handed, boosted the brute of a machine up off the ground, so she could rake underneath with the ease of housewife flipping over a rug to sweep the floorboards below. Wandering into the barn, Remus stalled near one of the oak support beams, folded his arms over his chest, and propped himself against it.

"Are you going to tell me what happened back there?"

Zodea halted for a minute, though they both knew_ she_ knew he had been heading her way from, perhaps, since he had opened the back door of the house. Even with his lycanthropic hearing, Remus had not been able to sneak up on Dea since she was six. It had made their games of hide and seek redundant, but, right up until she was old enough to think such things childish, when she had found him and Sirius within seconds, even when they incorporated apparition into their little games, the way Remus had played at being surprised at being found had always made her smile so radiantly.

He only wished it was all still so straightforward.

What good as a father was he if he could not even get her talking?

Yes, his Dea was a stubborn, dogged fellow. If she wanted to avoid a conversation, she would. Remus completely blamed Sirius. She had to have gotten her obstinate streak from somewhere, and it definitely wasn't him. Calmly, she placed the tractor back onto the ground with a groaning creak of the barn. She kept her back to him, took up her rake with both hands, and carried on sweeping.

"You know what I did, Moony."

There was a tenor of inevitability to her voice that Remus loathed. A resolution of fact. Absolute. Conclusive.

"Know what you did? What are you-… Malfoy? Are you talking about what happened with Malfoy, Zo-zo?"

Merlin, he must be feeling his age. He hadn't called her Zo-zo in years. Not since she was able to pronounce her own name. Yet, here, with memories of games far passed, times easier long gone, confronted with a hurting, forlorn cub, Remus ached for the days where all he had to do, to make it all better, was spin her in the air above his head, she had always loved the idea of flying, or deliver a tub of ice-cream.

"Sirius told me to keep my head down and not to mess with the muggles. I'm doing what I'm told."

Remus kicked away from the timber post.

"Zodea, look at me."

She stopped, rake lingering semi-stroke, and though she turned in his direction, she did not meet his gaze. The cheerful sun fell through the barn window, casting half her face in glorious light, yet, Remus's eye lagged on the part still flung in shadow and gloom. There was a jump to her jaw, a twitching leap of mashed, mangled expressions kept at bay by chomping teeth.

"I'm dangerous. I know that now. It's not safe to be around me. I don't want to hurt anyone. It's better for everyone if I just… Stay away."

Remus slumped.

"Oh, Zodea… No."

Strolling over, he gradually began to close the distance between them.

"You know, I couldn't have been prouder of you that day."

The crack of the rake handle snapping in Zodea's grip echoed out in the barn. She squinted down to it and laughed. Cool. Grave. Dry. A dreadfully tragic sound that Remus wished never to hear fall from her lips again.

"Proud? Proud! I set fire to a whole floor. I nearly killed three people. One of them my only friend. I'm the reason we're here. Why you and Sirius had to leave everything behind. You should hate me. You should _all _hate me. I mean, look at me! I can't even hold a fuckin' rake without destroying it."

She threw it from her, and Remus could only watch as it shattered against the barn wall, taking five panes with it, leaving a gaping hole to the garden. Again, she laughed that terrible laugh and Remus, ever watchful Remus, saw what no others could. What Sirius, for all his great points, could not see.

Zodea may smile, she may laugh and joke and jest, she may have seemed excited to come here, to discover, perhaps, her mother's story, _her _birth, but that excitement and joy was as fragile as the world around her. One prod and the facade came falling down, and underneath was a girl who was her own worst critic. Coming to a stop in front of her, Remus gently touched her jaw and lifted her face to meet his. The watery sheen in her green eyes tore at him worse than any of his scars ever had.

"Yes, I was proud. Very bloody proud. We all make mistakes, Dea. Sometimes very big mistakes. However, what makes a man is _not_ the mistakes he makes, but the actions he takes _after_ making those mistakes."

His hand fell from her chin.

"You saw your friend being hurt very badly. You lost your temper, yes, but none of us, yourself included, knew you were able to… To do what you did. No one could have seen it coming. Even you. And after you lost control and that… Fire came out, you aimed it away at the ceiling. Not only did you get Hermione out of that burning room, more telling, you went _back_ to get Malfoy and Parkinson."

Resting his hands on her shoulders, he smiled at her with everything he had. One day, Zodea would see what he saw. She would see her kind heart and compassion, her will to smile through the pain and put others before herself, her unflinching nature to stand tall against things he was sure would crush other men. Until that day, Remus would always be there to remind her of who she really was deep down. That's what fathers were for.

"You dragged them out to safety. Those who had spent years tormenting you, who hurt your friend, you went back to save. First and foremost, Dea, you faced the consequences. We all know you could have run long before any teachers got there, or lied and saved yourself by blaming something or someone else. Instead you owned up to your actions. Head high, you told the _truth_, when you knew that truth could and would hurt you. You made a mistake, we all do, but you owned up to it. That is so much _more_ than never making a mistake in the first place. So, yes, I am proud of you. Very, very, proud. Don't you dare, for even a second, ever think I am anything but."

A lone tear trickled down the curve of her cheek, dripping off the tip of her chin to fall on Remus's forearm. He made sure not to wince at the slight scratch it caused before it slipped off his arm. Ostensibly, invulnerable people made impenetrable tears. It had made her teething stage one hell of a ride.

"What if I make another mistake and hurt someone, really hurt someone, next time? You should have heard the girl's heartbeat, Moony. Even before I came close… It skyrocketed. Lana was… She was scared of me and I hadn't done anything. It was like I was back in that bathroom when my eyes started burning and I heard their hearts beating… Drumming so loudly… Terrified… Of _me. _Hermione too. So bloody scared of _me_. I did that. I scare people. What if Lana's reaction was right? What if she was right to be scared? What if they were all right in being scared?"

Ah, so there was the problem. The same thing Remus had suffered from before Sirius and James, in all their tenacity, had cured him from. Self-projection. In being scared of herself, as Remus had once been, she was seeing those around her frightened while Remus had seen his own demons mirrored back in that ugly taste of denial and self-disgust. When you couldn't like yourself, you couldn't see anyone else ever doing so. It was a slippery slope to climb up from, he knew, but climb Dea must.

"Hermione wasn't scared of you; she was frightened of what had happened. You would know that if you answered her letters. As Lana wasn't scared but _nervous. _The only one scared of Zodea Potter, I think, is yourself. You can't live your life in fear, cub. Trust me. As soon as you do, you won't have a life worth living anymore."

Reaching into his back pocket, Remus pulled out a few crinkled muggle notes, unfurled Dea's fist at her side, and placed them in her palm.

"Go on. Go out for a bit. Explore. Get a treat. Buy something nice for yourself. Speak to some locals. Make a friend. Just… Go out and be fifteen."

Her rebuff was swift.

"But Sirius said-"

"Never mind the old dog. He just worries for you. I'll talk to him. Now, go on. You can't hide away in this barn forever. There's a whole wide world out there just waiting for you. Go and see it."

The only way to have Zodea not be afraid herself was to show her, truly show her, that they did not fear her. The way to do that? Give her some trust. Trust in her choices, trust in her ability to control herself when needed, and vitally, trust in her as a person. Keeping her away, hidden, coming here to America, even if it led to answers that would eventual help, had only made the impression that she needed to be cut off, locked away, put in a box and forgotten. No one should feel that way.

Still, Zodea hesitated and Remus's smile curdled to a smirk. There was one sure way to get a teen running.

"Plus, Sirius will forget all about it once he figures out me and him have the house all to ourselves. You know, he loves it when-"

Her face scrunched.

"Oh, ew! I'm going! I'm going! Just-… No details!"

Snapping to the far wall of the barn in a blink, Zodea plucked up her leather jacket, one of Sirius's old ones he had passed down, from the bent nail in one of the posts she had used as a hook, flung it about her shoulders and flashed to the door. Remus's laughter followed her through her nippy jaunt.

"Yeah, I thought that would get you moving."

She paused by the door, glancing back.

"I love you Pa."

And that's what made everything worth it. The arguments. The tantrums. All the tears and laughter. Every up and down and loop-de-loop. Every blunder done and still the ones to come. Those three little words. _I love you_.

"I love you too cub. Off you pop, before Padfoot comes sniffing and we both get caught red handed."

Remus's smile persisted all the way back to the main house where, he knew, Sirius's rather melodramatic hysterics would be waiting.

* * *

**Woo or Boo?**

* * *

**Next Chapter: **A bus ticket, the Metropolis Museum, a cashmere coat and a run in with a man on business leaves Zodea with a very intriguing first excursion into the big world…

* * *

**Thank you all** for the follows, favourites, and always the best bit, the reviews! I hope you all enjoyed this chapter, look forward to the next, and if you could drop a few words, it would be greatly appreciated.


	3. Chapter 3

**CHAPTER THREE:**

**Cashmere Coats and Sea Breeze Smiles.**

* * *

_Zodea Potter's P.O.V_

America was a big fucking country. There was no other way to describe it, Zodea thought. _Colossal_. Coming from a little dank island bordered by four seas, you could set out from Cornwall one sunny afternoon, and eight hours later, find yourself merry in the jolly hills of Scotland. Eight hours, one third of a day, and you had crossed the entire breadth of her homeland. Eight hours travelling in America and, possibly, you were still in the same bloody state.

It was nearly inconceivable.

With muggle money burning a hole in her pocket, spring crisp and fresh about her, how she ended up in a six-hour bus ride to the nearest town, Metropolis, was a series of unfortunate events all stemming from that one misunderstanding that America was fucking big. Her meandering journey had started innocently enough.

At first, she had drifted into the heart of Smallville. A little two-by-four plot of sprawling shops. She had even found the coffee shop Lana had said she would be visiting. It hadn't been that hard. There _was_ only one. Still, coming to the door, she had spotted the girl in question inside, sitting on a cluster of coaches, surrounded by smiling, chatting friends and Zodea had…

She'd chickened out.

They had all looked happy. A little sickeningly so, yes, but happy all the same. A group of friends with steaming cups in hands and grins on faces, ignoring textbooks set across table, and Zodea had felt every bit the outsider she was. What was she meant to do? Walk in? Did she say hello? Or nice to see you again? No. That sounded pretentious. Old. Perhaps she could pretend it was an accidental meeting? Hey Lana, funny seeing you here! No. Definitely not. Lana had said she was going to the coffee house, if Zodea traipsed in an acted surprised at seeing her there, she might come across as dim or stalkerish or-

Merlin, how did people do this? Make friends? Was it this difficult for everyone else? When they didn't have to play at being muggle or ordinary run-of-the-mill witch? On T.V, Remus's guilty pleasure, young girls often spoke of boyfriends… Well, they did in the interrogations over their murder on those strange CSI dramas Remus pretended he didn't watch religiously, but Zodea didn't have one of those. Especially one she had murdered because he was sleeping with her mother and the head cheerleader who, subsequently through a series of flashbacks, revealed Zodea was jealous of.

Morgana, she hated those cop shows.

With no boyfriend, no school, no past friends she could speak of, what else was there? What else did average people speak about? Food? She liked chili. Yet, as much as she liked chili, she didn't think she could have an hour-long conversation over the stuff. What should she do? List off recipes? Did muggles have Gremlin Zest in theirs too? Shit. Fuck. Shit-fuck. Zodea panicked.

It was Cedric Diggory and the pumpkin juice all over again.

In the end, she didn't walk in. She turned around and tried to walk away. She bumped into a man, tall, as towering as herself, black haired, that was all Zodea had noted, that and how surprised his blue eyes had flashed when she knocked him back a step, she supposed people his size weren't used to being pushed about, as he went to enter and she went to dart away from the door. She must have really been flustered if she hadn't heard him lumbering up behind her. He'd gotten over his shock soon enough, began to ask her if she was alright, but Zodea had mumbled her hasty apologies and gotten the hell out of there.

She couldn't even walk about without nearly taking someone's shoulder clean off.

Cursing herself, she had rambled down the road right passed the news shop. A little poster snagging her downward gaze. It wasn't much, a4, torn in the corner and stuck to glass by blu tack, but the red on blue was eye catching. Metropolis Museum, it read, where William Blake's paintings would be on show in a special exhibition. Zodea had never gone to a museum before. Not once. Sirius had been worried about putting her in condensed crowds. Yet…

_Yet. _

Perhaps she wasn't brave enough, something she would _never _admit, to make friends just yet, but she could, maybe, show Remus his trust in her was granted by getting through this one little thing. How hard could a museum visit be? She could pop in, see these paintings, perhaps listen into some conversations, see how others talked in normal settings, pick up some tips and tricks, and if it all got too much, she could leave hastily without drawing too many eyes, go home and bobs your uncle, Zodea had gone and done it, something she had never done before, and she wouldn't have caused the ceiling to collapse in on them.

It was perfect!

It only took her twenty minutes to find the bus station. Again, Smallville only had one. It took her even less to buy a ticket from the balding man behind the counter, after she had asked how far this Metropolis was, and he had told her it was the nearest city. Undeniably, she could have ran to this Metropolis. Sure, it would have been shorter, journey wise. But that wasn't the point. She wanted to show Remus and Sirius that she could blend. Be a chameleon. She was even going to save her bus ticket to show Remus. Look at her. Here she was, dressed like a muggle, on a muggle bus, going off to the museum like every other muggle.

_Normal. _

For once, just once, Zodea was like everybody else around her, from the two-year-old crying in the front seat, to the paisley dressed woman in the back visiting her grandkids in the city, and it felt _fantastic. _

Settling into her seat by the window, it had all seemed so easy. She wouldn't need to control herself that long. She would be off the bus soon enough. Brilliant. Fool proof. Apart from the small, tiny, miniscule fact that America was fucking gigantic! The nearest city to an Englishman meant thirty minutes' drive. Max. Thirty fucking minutes.

Apparently, in America, the nearest town could be the whole of her country away!

Six hours she spent on that bus. Crammed. Sixteen heartbeats echoing in her ear. Pounding. Drumming. The engine of the bus exploded as if it was revving right by her ear. And Merlin, the kid, that little two-year-old with blond pigtails, fuck, she could w_ail_. Some teen near the back was blaring music from their headphones, popping gum like gunshots going off right by her head. The old lady in paisley wore the worst stagnant, nose curling, rose perfume mixed with three-day old talcum powder. And the woman behind her, in heels, kept tapping her leg, kicking her bloody seat, her heartbeat jolting whenever her phone pinged with a new message, something that smelled brash and harsh, chemical, seeping through her sweat.

Zodea nearly went insane.

But she made it. She did. In one piece. So did the bus and the people. She thought it was over then. The test. If she just got off the bus, she would be okay. She practically burst through the doors as the bus rolled to a halt, the driver shouting that it was the last stop, flopping out, away from the insanity of over stimulated senses… And right into the madness of the city. Wandering away from the bus stop, which the driver had told her would be in front of the museum, the city _hit _her.

So many sounds. Cars zooming down the street. Footsteps, thousands, marching, scurrying. Voices, all shouting at once, into phones, to each other, across streets, garbled noises that screeched. Heartbeats, countless, thumping, beating, hammering. The lights… So many lights. Headlights and stop signs, billboards and lit towers, tourists taking snaps of skylines and monuments, blinking, flashing, twinkling. The smells were something else. Stale air rising up from manhole covers. The scent of bodies pressed hotly together in roving crowds. The odour of food peddled at corners, mingling obnoxiously together. The scent of blood and piss and shit swimming just underneath the street.

Zodea was a moron. A complete and utter moron. How could she think she could do this? She wasn't ready. Too much. Too fucking much! Something underneath her foot crunch. The pavement gave way. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Her hands shot up, over her ears, clamping, eyes screwing closed. She just needed a moment. Silence. Just one second. Breathe. Breathe. In, out, in, out. As Remus said, count to ten. Ten. Nine. Eight-

Fifteen car horns honked across the city, a man on a bicycle flipped off an angry pedestrian, a sewer pipe burst a block away. Fuck! Her eyes were burning. She was going to-

A sniffle.

She heard it through the anarchy around her. A sniffle. Wet. Tired. She listened. She focused. Someone was… Crying. The rest simply seemed to melt away. Zodea could breathe. She could think. The burning stopped. She heard someone, not too far, crying and everything else didn't seem so utterly overwhelming. Important. Someone was _crying._

Were they hurt?

Her hands fell to her sides, her eyes blinked open. She gazed across the winding street. The bus driver had been right, there the museum stood before her, but… There. The alleyway at its side, offshoot of its immense grand stairs. That's where the crying was coming from. She tried to cross the road, but a car slammed on their breaks, hooting repulsively, forcing her to scuttle back onto the pavement.

"Oi! Watch where you're going!"

It, and the enraged driver, hauled away to the flurry of Zodea's hurried apologies. Back where she started, right on cracked pave-stone, still hearing the sniffle through the orchestra of lunacy that seemed to be Metropolis, she glanced around her to the moving mob swarming down the street. No one had paid any attention to her, not a single peek, not in her meltdown, not in her near car crash, and not in her stillness. They all seemed to be focused on…_ There._

There was a little pattern across the broad street. Black and white stripes topped with another, yes, _another, _flashing light. People flocked to the side of it, waiting, hordes on either side of the road. Why were they waiting there? Why was the flashing light counting down? What where the muggles doing? There were no roads in the Wizarding world. There was no need for them. Oh, they had pathways and sky-lanes, in the really busy towns such as Diagon Alley, for those who travelled by broom, apparition points stationed outside buildings, but roads?

Unheard of.

Who built rock belts that transported, at high speeds, boxes of metal that could pop you if you so much as clipped one in movement? Muggles, that's who. And muggles, Zodea thought, were a little bit crazy. The light across the road flashed red as the countdown hit zero. The cars came to a stuttering stop, and the people, masses, traversed over the black and white stripes.

Muggles may be crazy, but they were a little bit marvellous too! Keeping her speed in check, Zodea dashed for the stripes, melded into the crowd and there, right there, Zodea crossed a street. It wasn't much, muggles did it every day in the billions, but Zodea, who had never ventured into the muggle world apart from the odd trip to Kensington Park, which Sirius normally apparated them to at night so the place was less teeming, who had not visited the Wizarding world much either, who only ever really knew Grimmauld Place, and for a sweet but short time Hogwarts, felt as if she had crossed mount Everest.

The sniffle grew louder.

_No time._

She followed her feet, let her ears lead her, step by step, sniffle by whine. She ended up, not in the alleyway, as she first thought she would, but just by it, on the bottom rung of the grand stairs of the museum. A car pulled up on the road behind her, a strange thing indeed, by first glance. Long, so very long, with blacked out windows and-

Now was not the time to get distracted by shiny things. She scanned the steps to the vast, columned building, a beast of granite and pillar, looking like someone had plucked it from the heart of Rome. The steps were packed, teeming, as the streets had been, a father carrying a daughter on his shoulders. A teen with a camera hanging around their neck, taking shots of the museum. An elderly couple hobbling along together, the clack of their walking sticks louder than their faint heartbeats and-

_There._

A man. He was huddled by the railing, crouched on a step, ragged clothing, torn and worn, barely hanging up against the chill breeze. His fingers were blue, she could see, as they crooked around his arms, folded against his chest, trying to preserve any heat he could. Cold and blue and bent. Shivering. He was shivering, and crying, and no one… No one was looking.

Why was no one helping him?

It was like he was invisible, the little plastic cup in front of him barely containing two cents. The crowd walked on by, not daring to glance his way. They ate their hotdogs, dropped coins in the gutter, laughed and joked and smiled in their warm wool coats, and no one looked to the man freezing on the steps.

Zodea glanced up to the museum, to all the normal people going about their day. The money in her pocket felt oddly heavy. Too heavy. Heavy and _wrong_. She was going to go in there, follow the crowd, mingle and mix, and be normal, just as they were. She was going to prove to Remus and Sirius she could do it, be like everyone else and-

For once, glancing back to the cold man who had no money, no warmth and, she thought looking at his tattered shoes, no home, Zodea didn't want to be normal. She didn't want to be like the people just walking by. She didn't want to be like them full stop.

Not for a moment.

Not for a second.

Not at all.

There was always tomorrow. Zodea edged closer to the man on the stairs, not wanting to scare him as she scared so many others, stepping up the steps in clear long strides, shrugging out the shoulders of her jacket after she dug her money out. He glanced up, and up, and up. He looked stunned. Surprised. So shocked someone, anyone, was looking at him, _seeing _him. She bent down on her haunches, making herself as small as possible, and offered out her coat in one hand, the money in the other.

He stuttered, shaking his head, protesting. Zodea reached for his hand, slipped the money into cold palm, and swung her jacket around his hunched shoulders. Gentle. Soft.

"No. Take it, please. Get somewhere warm to sleep, and something hot to eat. You'll get sick out here at this time of year."

He stopped, held still, and finally melted into the warm leather of her-… _His _coat. He smiled at her then, and it was better and more beautiful than any painting she could have seen in that museum. She grinned back, and pulled away.

"You're a blessing, miss. A real blessing. I can't thank you enough."

Her grin grew.

"Seeing you somewhere safe is thanks enough."

He was swift on his feet, plucking up his cup, despite how thin he was now that Zodea could see him standing, mumbling still how thankful he is, before he skidded down the steps and away into the street and crowds and bustling life. She watched him until she could no longer see the top of his head. She stood again, dusting her hands off on the thighs of her jeans.

The people around her swarmed into the museum, and she was, if she was being honest, a little sad she couldn't join them. Remus would have been so proud if she just-

Another day, perhaps. With one last longing look at the throng of merry people, Zodea went to turn away and head down the stairs, back the way she came, to wait at the bus stop for the next ride home, lucky she had bought a return ticket. She had crossed a road without causing a pile-up, road a full bus, and perhaps that would be enough to make Sirius see-

A voice, smooth like velvet, soft like silk, and elegant like a stained-glass window, spoke out behind her just as she began to turn.

"That was awfully kind of you."

Zodea snapped around. A man stood by the strange long car, a few steps away from her, door thudding closed behind him as he exited from the back. He was tall, only an inch or two shorter than herself, made up of cashmere and clean keen lines. Lithe, Remus would say, a dancer, Sirius would call him. And completely bald, despite how young he appeared to be. He couldn't be older than his mid-twenties.

And what did Zodea do in her infinite wisdom? She scowled at him.

"Do you make it a habit to spy on people?"

He smiled at her then. Large and toothy, teeth straight and white against his pale face, slightly lopsided. It was the type of smile that was more than a flutter of lip, a smile you could see in the eye, a curious concoction of green and grey, like a forest lost in the fog, a smile you heard in a voice, in the way the posture relaxed. It was the prettiest thing Zodea had seen in a long time.

"Kindness and a sharp tongue. Quiet a unique combination."

Zodea scoffed. Unsettled by the smile. Flushed by the eyes. Unnerved by… Him. She wasn't used to people, after the first weary glance at her, staring so… Unabashedly. _Closely. _Perhaps this was the same surprise the shivering man had felt when he noticed she _saw_ him. They normally averted their gazes, tried to not stare too long at the giant at their side, afraid they might get her Fee-fi-fo-fum'ing their way. So she did the only thing she could think of.

She began to walk away.

"And that didn't answer my question at all, which likely means yes."

She heard a chuckle charted by footsteps following.

"Wait, aren't you going to get cold? It's freezing out."

She faltered, stumbled to a standstill as she glanced down at herself, at her thin t-shirt and torn jeans and combat boots. Shit. She had forgotten she didn't have her leather jacket anymore. She knew what it must look like to someone… Someone not _like _her. Normal people didn't swan around in winter in a t-shirt and nothing else.

She was here for five bloody minutes, and someone was already picking her apart, plucking at her differences like violin strings, and that was the last thing she needed. Instead of going home and making Remus and Sirius proud, she could already picture the absolute shit-storm if accidentally outed herself so carelessly.

Zodea changed her mind. The mans smile wasn't pretty. Neither was his eyes. He was a menace. A tall, lanky menace who looked good at dancing. Squinting over her shoulder, glaring, she tried her best to brush it off.

"This weather is summer in the highlands. I'll be fine."

There. That should do it. An added glare for good measure, a little curl to her lip, a straightening of her spine and shoulders to full height, and like everyone else who saw her, he would stutter and run and not ask any more-

The strange, strange man fell instep beside her, still… still _grinning. _What in the name of Nimue was wrong with this bald bastard? Why wasn't he running away? Why wasn't he spluttering and stumbling? And she was wrong before. His gaze could meet her own, less than in inch shorter, only a centimetre or two, and… and… Why was he still smiling?

"Ah, that's where the slight brogue comes from. Scotland? A bit far from home, aren't you?"

He cocked his head at her, knitted scarf coiling around his sharp jaw, and Zodea merely blinked back.

"A bit bloody noisy, aren't you?"

The laughter was louder this time, lighter too, refreshing like sea breeze.

"Not many people around here would have done what you just did. It made me curious. You know, he's probably going to spend that money on alcohol or drugs. It's likely a waste."

And suddenly, Zodea couldn't stand the man. She couldn't stand his expensive coat. She couldn't stand his sea breeze laugh. She definitely couldn't stand his pretty lopsided smile, and don't even get her started on those bloody eyes. Her face screwed up, scowling and practically snarling, and before she knew it, could control herself, she was barking back.

"That doesn't mean giving him a chance is the wrong thing to do. Now, excuse me. I have to get home."

Again, she tried to walk away, walk away before she punched a hole in his head, and again, the man just wouldn't give up.

"Weren't you just heading into the museum? Oh… Was that the last of your-… Follow me."

She needed to just walk away. One foot in front of the other. Come on, toddler's had mastered this move. She could do this. One step, followed by another, and then another. Of bloody course, she did none of that. She stopped, she turned, and she faced the man.

"I don't want your charity. I can go next time."

The bright grin was back.

"The exhibition closes tonight, so I think not. And to ease your bruised ego, don't worry. I won't spend a dime. Now, do you want in or not?"

Zodea wavered on the sidewalk, the man standing before her, people walking around them like a tide would bend around an island. _In or not?_ It seemed a simple question, but she knew nothing ever was simple. Of course, she wanted in. That was the whole point of her harebrained journey, she wanted to see the paintings, hear the people, for one moment, just one, be a normal teenager doing what a normal teenager would do. She wanted it so bad it hurt.

It _burned_.

What harm could that cause? Even with his height, Zodea could not smell a lick of magic about this man, not like the lemon zest lightning Sirius, Remus and most witches and wizards reeked of. He was obviously a muggle. A muggle with a pretty grin, nothing more. That wasn't so dangerous, was it? Worse case scenario, if he tried something, Zodea was sure she could snap him clean in half, or pop his head right off like a Ken doll.

He must have sensed her waning hostility, though a spark of ire still flickered in her chest, as his eyes lit up above his grin, gesturing behind him with a tilt of his head to the museum, urging her to follow silently. One wrong move, and she would twist him up like a pretzel. Sluggishly, she trailed, and he looked like he had either won the lottery, or managed to coax a wild bear into his living room for a bowel of cereal.

Just to be a bit of a prick, something Zodea was excellent at doing, she took the steps two at a time, and made her pace just a smidgen too fast, even for him. She chuckled as he jogged to catch up to her side. Her mirth died when she heard him laugh too.

Bastard.

It didn't take the pair long to scale the steps and Zodea went to join the back of the long winding queue for the ticket office. A hand, warm, so very warm, wrapping around her wrist stopped her, softly tugging. Wearily, she eyed the hand, valiantly fought down the urge to yank her limb free in shock, likely ending with her also ripping his arm out its socket. The only people who had ever willingly touched her were Sirius and Remus, and that one time, before she broke her sons arm, Molly Weasley had given her a greeting hug.

It felt… Nice.

Really nice.

He cut the line, the ticket office too, straight to the guard stationed at the door leading into the museum, checking tickets before entry. His hand fell from her wrist as he dipped it into the pockets of his pressed slacks, fishing out an ID in a leather wallet of some kind, and Zodea, silent, towering, still partially scowling, sort of… Well, missed it.

He flashed the card at the security guard.

"Two for entry. It would be fantastic if we could skip the line?"

The guard smiled and nodded, threading a thumb through his belt.

"Of course, Mister Luthor. Head on in."

The guard pulled back the red rope, making room for the man, Luthor, to walk through. He did, but stopped when he spotted Zodea had halted. He popped a pale brow at her from over his shoulder, almost daringly. Zodea squared her shoulders and marched forward, a Gryffindor through and through, straight past him, and into the large foyer of the museum. He shook his head as she passed, grinning.

"Are you an _actual _spy?"

He chuckled.

"No, just a man with a family name that can pull red rope. Here we are."

The foyer was huge, a mangled web of glass and chrome and domed ceiling, and breathtakingly muggle. Beautiful… It was beautiful, she thought as she gazed about herself, wide-eyed and slack mouthed. The lifts to the side stood sleek, waiting to take people to the higher floors, while the great stairs before them, splitting up the sides, wound through the exhibits like veins through the body, bringing people, like life blood, to the many treasures this magnificent building concealed.

Zodea had never seen anything like it.

She didn't think she ever would again.

Why didn't the muggles just live here? Was that allowed? Could _she _stay here? Sleep? Live? Never leave and-

"Unfortunately, this is where I must leave you. I have business to attend to upstairs."

Unceremoniously, Zodea snapped back into herself with a sharp drop and a dazed blink. She tried to scowl again, seem big and tough and mean, but she knew she failed. She was still smiling brightly, and he smiled back, that sea breeze smile, and perhaps, maybe, just a little, he wasn't such a bastard.

His smile fell to a frown as he scanned her, and, as she was so often used to while under scrutiny, she hunched down, folded into herself like a decking chair, small and unobtrusive and nothing to see here, please move along'ness. Before she could tell him to bloody quit it or she'd poke his eyes out, he slipped out his long, expensive, cashmere coat, as black as his suit. He held it out to her.

"Take it. You'll need it for when you leave. It really is freezing out there."

Zodea shook her head.

"No. Really. I'm fine. I don't need-"

He ignored her, strode closer, a bit too close, _way _too close for Zodea's comfort, reached out to pluck up her wrist again, and placed the coat in her palm, curling her lax fingers around the wool before stepping back.

"I have plenty more. If it makes you feel better, give it me back if we meet again."

That was it. That was all he said before he began to walk away to the lifts across from them. Zodea, now in a twist of fate from earlier, was now the one shouting at his back, clutching at his coat.

"Why did you do this?"

The ding of the elevator doors opening punctuated her confusion. He stepped inside, shoved his hands deep into his pockets and rolled to face her.

"Because you were kind, and Metropolis needs more of that. I hope to see it grow and repaid."

He stood there, this Luthor, under the harsh cold light of the elevator, in a soft jumper, pressed slacks, and shiny Italian leather shoes, and none of it really mattered, Zodea would not remember most of it, only that he had such a warm, lovely smile. The elevator ding'd again, and Zodea called back one last time.

"Thank you!"

The doors began to close is when his eyes widened and he scrambled, hand coming out his pocket to try and block the door.

"Wait! I never got your name-"

He was too late. The doors shut with a slick click, and Zodea watched the red number on the little screen above climb higher and higher. She stared for a while, longer than she supposed she should have, holding a strangers coat, before she shrugged it off. It was probably for the best he didn't know her name, and she only his last.

Pretty smiles, she decided, were, in fact, extremely dangerous.

Toxic and contagious, maybe, by the way she couldn't wipe her own off her face no matter how hard she tried.

Best she never saw it, or him, ever again.

Still, she flushed with… Pride. Something hefty and flinty like pride. Was this how you made friends? Zodea didn't know, not really, but she thought it might be, and perhaps that was the secret everyone else seemingly already knew. You made friends when you _didn't _try so hard.

Glancing to the coat in her hands, she ran her thumb along the collar. Dense, soft, incredibly soft. She shrugged it on. Once More, it was for the best, she thought. If this muggle had questioned her t-shirt, the other's in the museum might too, and provoking suspicion was the last thing she wanted. It had nothing to do with the smell of pine, something warm and mulled like wine, with a bite of something sweet like pomegranate lingering at the end.

It _didn't. _

The coat fit, falling to her calves, as it had on him, a bit too broad in the shoulder, but long enough in the arm. Grinning, she gazed around herself in amazement, breathing in the museum, the wonder, the life, and with one last chuckle, she dashed off, away, up the stairs to all the sights and marvels to see.

By the time Lex Luthor made it back to the ground floor to ask for a name, she was long gone.

* * *

_Ten Hours Later…_

_Zodea's P.O.V_

Zodea got back home just in time, as the hallway clock chimed eleven at night. She came ambling in the back door, full of smiles and laughter. It had been a good day. A _really_ good day. She helped a man, gained a coat, and saw William Blake's paintings. And she didn't destroy _one_ building. Not even a shed. No muggles had burned. No priceless art smashed. Zodea had gone out, controlled herself, and the world hadn't ended.

She found Sirius and Remus waiting for her in the kitchen, the latter warming up tea and the former pouting over a mug of earl grey. Zodea politely pretended she couldn't smell the musky aroma of sweat still persistent in the air, the tangy odour of unnameable bodily fluids, and the chemical burn of the air freshener, she was guessing Remus, had quickly sprayed to cover up the smell he knew she'd find.

Nope.

She didn't smell any of it.

However, she did see Sirius's pout, the worried downturn of his brows, and the sullen slope of his eye, and heard the silence echoing about the heartbeats of her adopted parents and, suddenly, her pride was gone. She only felt guilty. Very, very, very guilty. She crept into the room, shoulders sagged, head bowed, trudging to the kitchen island.

"It wasn't Remus's fault. I-"

Sirius glanced up from over his mug, as Remus carried on cooking, respectfully giving the two of them as much space as the kitchen allowed without burning the fried tomatoes. The pout vanished like smoke, superseded by a smile Zodea would always adore. They said the star Sirius was the brightest in the sky. Zodea would argue her Sirius's smile was brighter.

"You're not in trouble, Dea. Moony and I talked and, well, I've been a bit bull-headed, haven't I?"

Sheepishly, he scratched at the back of his neck, wincing. He didn't need to say anything more. Not with the three of them. Zodea tumbled into the seat opposite him, watching as he breached the distance still between them, and rested a hand over her folded arm on the table, squeezing through the woven wool.

"Just, be careful out there, alright? Not for _them,_ but for yourself. That's all I've ever cared about. You could destroy the whole world out there, burn it right down to ashes, and all I would ever want is for you to come home."

Zodea nodded, powerless to get any words out from the lump growing in her throat, almost blocking her airway. As long as she came home… She could do that. She _would _always do that. Home, to her fathers.

The tender moment was swiftly shattered when Sirius eyed her closer, gaze dropping to her chest, frowning, hand snatching back to point at her arm. His voice was high, higher than she had ever heard him go before, almost a shriek, nearly a squeal, incredulous and creaking like the stairs of Grimmauld place.

"Is that a man's coat?!"

Zodea peeked down at herself, for the second time that day, and huffed.

"It's not like that. I gave mine-"

He bounced out his chair like a Boggart from a closet, frantically waving a hand at Zodea as he whirled on Remus, tugging his husband away from the skillet.

"She's by herself for five minutes and-… And-… And some garden Gnome brained bastard is-"

Zodea stood too, the chair skidding back.

"To a homeless man and he saw me and-"

"She's fifteen! _Fifteen_! Much too young for men! Men who wear _that_ size coat! Remus, call-"

"He just wanted to make sure I wasn't going to get cold on the way home. I tried telling him I would be fine, but he wouldn't listen and I couldn't exactly say, oh, look mate, I'm invulnerable, weather don't effect me-"

"I'll cut his balls off! I'll do it! Don't think I won't! Fifteen! My daughter! Who does he think he is-"

Tugging has shirt sleeve free from a frenzied Sirius, Remus held up his hands and bellowed.

"Enough!"

Silence.

Not even a pin drop.

Taking in a long, dragging, mostly suffering breath, Remus turned to Zodea, calmly.

"Dea?"

She groaned.

"It was nothing like_ that_. I gave mine to a homeless man. This guy saw it and was just being kind. I couldn't say no anymore than I did without seeming… Odd."

Sirius scanned her, likely saw the truth prowling there in her open face, Zodea was never the best at lying, and sniffed sharply.

"Well, I suppose that makes sense. It's good to get the practice in anyway, for when it does start happening. Can't let just anyone walk off with my little-"

Remus shot him a fierce glare, eyes flashing amber, tone full of brusque warning.

"Sirius."

The façade plummeted as Sirius deflated, firing Dea an apologetic smile, small and sad and so awfully Sirius.

"Sorry, love. You know me, can't really help myself."

She took her seat as he took his, smirking across a chuckle.

"You wouldn't be you if you could."

His nose rose into the air. Haughty.

"I will take that as a compliment and nothing else."

She laughed, deep, cheerful, stretched, like a sunbeam. Remus slipped a plate full of fry-up in front of her before he took the spare seat next to Sirius. Zodea wasted no time, devouring toast and beans and black pudding alike.

"So, are we really going to that dinner tomorrow?"

Dea asked around a mouthful, grimacing at the barbed look Remus gave her for the lack of manners. Yet, he did snicker at the rather comical gulp she took.

"Can't really dodge it without casting suspicion. This is a small town, people talk. If there's a family who seems reclusive, they'll home in on it within seconds and become more curious. Then they'll _really _start looking. Best we go and make the most of it. Who knows, that Lana girl is going and she seemed nice. Around your age too, I think. I believe the Kent's have a boy only a year older than you. You could make some friends, and, perhaps, not steal their coat this time."

Sirius wiggled closer, voice plunging to a conspiratorial murmur.

"Good thing that Nell seemed to be a gossip. I wager all the local rumours run through her. If anyone knows _anything_ that could lead to a clue about Lily and her time here, it would be her. I bet you."

Zodea regarded her parents. She loved them more than anything else in the world, and if anyone could find out what happened to her mother all those years ago, she didn't doubt, not for a second, it was the men before her. Yet, she suddenly felt… Off. Not off… Cautious. Exhausted.

Scared.

What if it was something awful? Truly terrible? What if they _did _discover it and, because they now knew, they would no longer love her and-

And she was being silly. Stupid. Childish.

She was being a fifteen-year-old girl.

And no matter how hard she tried; she couldn't shake the sudden shadow looming over her.

"So, you two play detectives, and I play at normal human being with the neighbouring teens?"

Remus smiled woefully at her.

"No. We ask a few questions, don't push, and we all have a nice evening. Don't worry, Dea. Enjoy yourself."

As her father had, Zodea timidly rubbed the back of her neck.

"Does it make me sound stupid if I said I was nervous?"

Sirius got up to take his empty mug to the sink, spelling the draining board empty. As he passed, he tried to ruffle her hair. She ducked out of his grasp.

"No, it makes you sound like any other teenager. You'll do fine, love. Nothing can _possibly_ go wrong."

Her fork fell to her plate with a clang.

"Why would you say that! Merlin, what-… Why? Out of everything you could have said, why would you say_ that_? Morgana, I'm going to burn one of their heads off, aren't I? Or knock their house down in a sneeze! What if I get a leg twitch and boot a hole in one of them? Sirius! Why would you say that!"

Remus sighed and slumped, massaging the bridge of his nose as if he was fighting a tension headache, as Zodea, flustered, dashed from the kitchen in a whoosh that fluttered the kitchen curtains. In the distance, they heard the barn door bang.

Well, what _had_ been the barn door.

By the sound, it was off its hinges now.

Sirius stared at the spot Zodea had only just been in, eyes wide, cup swinging from his fingers, bewildered.

"What? What did I say?"

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**Yay or Nay?**

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**Next Chapter: **A visit from a friend leads Clark Kent to a dinner party, where he meets the girl who had done what no one else ever had before when she bumped into him. Bruised his shoulder. Determined to get answers, Clark thought it was all going well until his mother knocked her glass from the table…

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I hoped you enjoyed this! **Thank you** all for the follows and favourites, and the lovely reviews, be sure to leave one if you have the time, and I will hopefully see you all soon.


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